Follow Up: Schenectady's credit still pending with new bank

Updated 7:17 am, Sunday, February 24, 2013

SCHENECTADY — Information provided by the new city finance commissioner, Deborah DeGenova, caused a slight stir last weekwhen she mentioned at a council committee meeting that a "credit check didn't go the way the underlying bank expected it to go" for a routine leasing of 10 police vehicles.

A new bank was found, with a slightly higher interest rate, which the council needed to sign off on. However, a credit check is pending with that bank, too, for the $330,000 lease.

News that a bank rejected the city because of its credit would be noteworthy at any time — but particularly after a state audit in September said that while Schenectady is solvent now, it won't be by 2016. Also that same month, Moody's Investors Service downgraded the city's bond rating, citing Schenectady's above-average debt burden and below-average socioeconomic indicators.

Mayor Gary McCarthy said the bank rejection is not serious. He said the leasing fell through for various reasons, including that the council waited almost a year to decide what vehicles to include in the lease, and that the city does not provide creditors with a complete inventory of all its assets. "Some of it is a little distorted," McCarthy said. But, he said, the Moody's downgrade didn't help.

The mayor continues to say the city will see a "slight surplus" from 2012's financials. But the city's official self-audit won't be released until May.

According to the recently released report, volunteers conducted at least eight hours of counts over four days in August at each site: 22 locations on 14 greenway trails.

The report estimates that all the trails together had a total of 2,259,070 users annually. The most popular location was the Haviland Road Trailhead on the Hudson Valley Rail Trail. The trailhead also serves as a western entrance to the Walkway Over the Hudson State Historic Park, and the report says the estimate supports the walkway's estimate of 750,000 users annually.

Two Capital Region locations were studied:

• At the Uncle Sam Bikeway, at the Gurley Avenue trailhead in Troy, 75 users were seen over the four days.

"It is the hope of the project organizers that the volunteers will continue their counts in subsequent years, in order to continue building the body of data documenting New York state trail use," the report says.